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I grew up surrounded by the memories of two world wars — not my own memories, of course, but those of the adults whose lives unfolded around me.

On this 100th anniversary of that first Armistice Day, such personal memories of the Great War are gone forever. Obituary pages bear grim witness to the rapidly dwindling number of veterans and others who remember what the Second World War was like, as well.

Soon, only those who have been involved in Canada’s longest and smallest wars will be left to remind the rest of us what service “for Queen and Country” can mean.

Geordie Sutherland certainly knew. Every Sunday, he greeted me at the door of my church in Selkirk, wearing his navy blue legion blazer and a red regimental necktie. Only serious illness or a reluctant holiday would make him leave his post.

As the years went by, he yielded to my curiosity and talked a little about the Great War. Born in Scotland, he had emigrated to Canada as a youngster, only to lie his way past the recruiters and enlist when he was 15 years old. Discovering his age just before the boat sailed, the army decided he was too young to die, and left him at home for another year.

Geordie eventually got his wish and shipped over to Europe. After having both mumps and chickenpox, he made it to France in time to fight in the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917, where he was wounded, likely by shrapnel. After the war, he returned to Ontario with his first wife, a war bride. Later in life, he moved to Selkirk with his second wife, becoming a fixture at the legion, in the church and around town.

From that time forward, however, he told no one — not even his family or closest friends — about his wartime experiences. They were too painful for words. Even many years afterward, only the tears in his eyes and a thickening of his Scottish brogue (if he could speak at all) revealed just how much pain came to mind on days such as Nov. 11.

When the guns fell silent on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the world sighed with relief. What we need to remember, 100 years later, however, is that the Great War should never have been fought at all.

The sacrifices of 1914-18, made by both those who died and those who lived, and the pain of their families at home, accomplished nothing good. It was obviously not “the war to end all wars,” because “the Great War” became known as the First World War after the second one began in 1939. In fact, the ink was not even dry on the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 before people were discussing, fearing — and planning — what they called “the Next War.”

As a historian, over and over again I have come to the conclusion that the Great War was unnecessary, that it was the product of the arrogance and stupidity of leaders whose warped view of the universe was not tempered by contact with reality, evidence or common sense.

Four years of worldwide industrial warfare destroyed four empires, shattered two more and (more ominously) opened to door to conflict between two new empires in the Pacific (America and Japan) and the development and use of atomic weapons.

When you add to that devastation the vindictive and pigheaded terms of the Treaty of Versailles, by 1919, the foundations were laid for the rise of communism and fascism and a next war that would be worse.

Without the Great War, in other words, life in the rest of the 20th century would have been very different.

So, when the church bells ring out across Canada at sundown on Nov. 11 this year, ringing 100 times to mark the centennial of that armistice, with every stroke of every bell, we should remember the sacrifices that were made by people we will never know, in a war that should never have been fought.

But if we really want to honour their sacrifices, we can’t just ring a bell.

They would want us to find a way to settle our differences other than by fighting. They would also want us to reject leaders who demonstrate the same bad judgment that in 1914 launched the planet into a century filled with conflict.

No one who starts a war expects to lose it — but next time around, there will be no winners. Everyone will certainly lose.

One year, in late fall, I got a message that Geordie had finally decided to tell me about his experiences when I came home from university at Christmas. To my deep regret, by then he had taken that secret pain to his grave, unshared.

When election time rolls around, I really do my best to avoid repeating the lines from Simon and Garfunkel’s Mrs. Robinson in my head:

“Laugh about it, shout about it/When you’ve got to choose/Every way you look at it, you lose…”

Politics of all kinds these days, not just the American variety, leave us wondering where the heroes have gone, why the leaders we have today seem so far removed from the ones we remember.

When people reminisce with fondness about the arrogant disdain Pierre Trudeau had for mere mortals, or hail Jean Chrétien as the “green” prime minister, or remember Stephen Harper for his humility, there is something seriously wrong with our political compass — and with our moral compass — as well as with our memory.

Marvel Comics has touched a nerve in the last decade with all of its various superhero films. Our world does need heroes, of all sorts, but the ones we see in the news most frequently are the ones most lacking in leadership essentials.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on 1.5 degrees (Oct. 8), combined with Category 5 hurricane Michael hitting the Florida Panhandle as the worst ever recorded there, provided a fitting context for American economist William Nordhaus sharing the Nobel Prize in economics for his work on carbon tax and greenhouse-gas emission reduction.

Flip to Manitoba the same week, and Premier Brian Pallister flops by cancelling his Made in Manitoba Climate and Green Plan’s carbon tax — apparently to the surprise of his caucus, as well as the dismay of Manitobans of all political stripes. We now have no carbon tax, as well as no plan what to do with carbon tax revenues to reduce emissions if the federal government follows through on what it promised.

The rest of that Green Plan will now probably be kicked to the curb, because Manitoba can’t afford any of it without carbon tax revenue, but Pallister can still weakly claim that he tried.

At least when Alberta’s Rachel Notley makes a hash of things, she does it with some literary flair. She pompously announced, “In Alberta, we ride horses, not unicorns,” to a bunch of teachers who have already figured out that Albertans don’t ride nearly enough horses to save the planet, as that province is Canada’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, mostly from fossil-fuel combustion.

Ontario’s Doug Ford, on the other hand, is crying into his now-more-expensive beer. Climate change will wreck barley production and drive up the price of what Ontario voters seemingly wanted more than a healthy future for their children.

As another example of the fiscal responsibility we have come to expect from recent Conservative governments, Ford’s fit of pique in cancelling the cap-and-trade system and other green initiatives will cost Ontarians upwards of $3 billion and, for next generations, much more down the road.

Throughout all of this political nonsense, Mother Nature just keeps on warming, ignoring our seriously misplaced sense of self-importance and leaving us to sow the seeds of our own doom.

It doesn’t have to be this way — but that would mean finding leaders who really lead, on the issues that threaten the world as we know it.

Sometimes I wonder if we are looking too high up the ladder. Perhaps we should be looking not for global heroes, but for local ones.

Canadians are not alone in this predicament. Elsewhere, when national governments fail repeatedly to address the causes of global warming and climate change, regional governments are stepping up. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has threatened to sue California and other states to stop their climate initiatives, essentially saying the federal government has the right to endanger their children, too.

When regional governments also fail, local governments — especially in cities — are still stepping up to make a difference. More and more people live in cities, and in many ways the global effort to change course will be won or lost in the places where most people live.

The mayor of Winnipeg (who is elected directly, unlike the premier) manages the lives of three-quarters of Manitoba’s population. City councillors are responsible for a very large budget, in a defined local area, where they have the authority to do some things differently, if they choose, regardless of what the province says.

If the mayor and council (and the Manitoba Capital Region municipalities) decide to work together for a sustainable future, it would give everyone a place to contribute, right here where it matters most — close to home — however inadequate the provincial effort might be.

On election day, get out and vote for some local heroes — for people who want to make a real difference where they live, who will work for serious change and not just continue to do business as usual.

The world’s attention was riveted by the plight of the Wild Boars soccer team trapped in a cave in Thailand, and the effort to bring them out.

The cave rescue even came close to moving the World Cup off the front page of the news, as hour-by-hour reports from the huge media team flooded in faster than themonsoon rains.

Like the World Cup, everyone was playing for a win. The time was short, the intensity had a deadline, and there was no prize for second place.

It was an event custom-made for media coverage, able to be captured in tweets by the moment that updated everyone on the plight of the boys and their coach, complete with pictures from inside the cave where they were trapped.

In a world beset by difficult problems, this one would not drag on for long. One way or another, it would soon be over. Accustomed to watching soccer players take dives on the World Cup pitch, these cave dives were for real— and dangerously so. The Thai diver who ran out of oxygen himself was instantly immortalized as a hero, and we will no doubt learn of other heroes after the fact.

It was all over before there could be competition from the final games of the World Cup. Hailed as a successful example of global co-operation, it was an international effort that transcended the differences that separate us.

And so on. You might detect a tinge of sarcasm here. While the rescue truly was heroic and amazing, the commentary tended to be overdone and rather self-serving. Most countries contributed media teams, not divers. While the “thoughts and prayers” were no doubt sincere, we will need to see whether that international partnership extends to paying the enormous cost of the rescue operation.

No doubt the media spotlight helped, but I was left reflecting on how many much-larger problems lack that special attention because they can’t be resolved so quickly. If there is no quick “win,” just a long and painful story, it gets pushed to the side — ignored, or soon forgotten, if new ways aren’t continually found to bring the issue back into the news.

So at the same time, the worldwas focused on soccer and cave diving, eight million people in Yemen moved closer to death from starvation, with far less fanfare.

We were concerned with 12 boys in a Thai cave, and several thousand children separated from their parents and kept in cages in the United States for being “illegal” migrants, but conservative estimates conclude that at least 50,000 children died from malnutrition and disease last year in Yemen alone.

With a military offensive underway by Saudi Arabia and allies against the Houthi militia, those horrible numbers will skyrocket if taking the port of Hodeidah remains the objective of their assault.

Local players might find a solution to the war in Yemen if they were not backed by outside agents (Saudi Arabia and Iran) that are essentially fighting the war by proxy. The recent escalation has apparently been endorsed by the American administration, making it complicit in this unfolding tragedy.

Whether his actions are deliberate or merely the result of impulsive early-morning tweets, U.S. President Donald Trump’s presidency so far has been marked by acrimony, both at home and abroad.

Allies are poised to become antagonists, while supposed antagonists seem to have become friends.
In Trump’s decisions, however, there also seems to be a consistent curve toward encouraging conflict. Under moderate leadership, Iran could be a force for stability in an area where— looking at Iraq, Syria and Libya — there has been nothing but devastation for more than 25 years.

From moving the American embassy to Jerusalem to cancelling the Iranian nuclear deal, to cutting off the oil exports on which Iran’s economic recovery from decades of sanctions depends, Trump seems to be taking every possible step, short of declaring war, to ensure instability will continue in the Middle East.
Those eight million people at risk of death in Yemen seem about to become anonymous casualties of the politics of governments — or presidents — that don’t care.

Clearly, looking at the overwhelming public response to boys trapped in caves or children kept in cages, however, it seems ordinary people do care, once they know what is really going on.

We all have a responsibility to make sure the Yemen story continues to be told until something changes for the better.